River of Glass (27 page)

“I gonna get a needle stick?” he asked, brow furrowing.

“I don’t know, Sport. We’ll have to ask the doctor.” I kissed him on the head, and Maria passed Paul the remote. We watched cartoons and talked about nothing until the nurses came and prepped Paul for surgery. Maria and I signed a sheaf of terrifying permissions. Then D.W. brought in three Styrofoam cups in a cardboard carrier, and the three of us went to the surgical waiting room, drinking bitter coffee and hoping for the best.

“He’s going to be okay,” I said. “Even getting a pacemaker is an outpatient procedure these days.”

“It’s heart surgery,” Maria said. “A heart is a big deal.”

“I’m just saying, this is a really routine surgery. We always knew he might have to have it one day. Virtually nobody has any complications.”

“Virtually,” she said. “One to two percent. That’s one in a hundred.”

“Those are good odds.”

“Not when it’s your child.”

An hour passed. Two. The average surgery for ventricular septal defect was between three and four hours. At two and a half, I was pacing like a caged wolverine.

Maria rubbed her eyes and tossed the
Women’s Fitness
she’d been reading onto a pile of dog-eared magazines. “I used to think, oh if only Paul didn’t have Down syndrome, everything would be perfect. Now all I can think is, oh if only Paul didn’t have this heart problem, everything would be perfect.”

“Me too,” I said. “It changes your perspective.”

D.W. stood up and stretched. His eyes were red, with purple hollows underneath. “I’m going to go pick up some Jell-O. For when he wakes up. Either of you want anything?”

“Something decadent and chocolate,” Maria said.

“Nothing for me.”

He gave her a peck on the lips and left, shrugging into his Tennessee Titans windbreaker. Maria touched my cast, then gently closed her fingers over mine. “Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Tell me he’s going to be okay.”

“He’s going to be okay, Maria. I promise you he’s going to be okay.”

An hour later, I went down to the lobby to call Khanh.

“I’ll come with you,” Maria said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

When I turned on my phone, the voice mail and missed call icons flashed on the screen. I pushed the voice mail icon, and Khanh’s voice said, “Me, you friend, we go stir pot.”

Shit.

I dialed her number. No answer. Called the motel room. A canned voice invited me to leave a message since no one was available to take my call.

Double shit.

Maria rubbed her face with her hands. “What’s going on?”

“She’s not answering. Her message says she’s gone to stir the pot.”

“That sounds bad. Maybe you should go and check on her.”

“She’s a grown woman. I’ll check on her when Paul gets out of surgery.”

She reached for my hand again, pressed it to her cheek. “You have no idea how much I want you here, but I really think you should go.”

36

T
he room was empty, as I’d known it would be. The Smith & Wesson was gone. A note on the pillow repeated the message:
You friend and I go now, stir pot.

I only had one friend who would be willing to help Khanh stir the pot. I dialed Khanh’s cell again, then Ashleigh’s. Both went to voice mail, and I left them the same message, short and simple:
Call me
.

I texted Malone the basics, knowing there was nothing she could do. Khanh and Ashleigh had left under their own power to confront a man we couldn’t prove was dirty. A man who wasn’t even in Malone’s jurisdiction.

Damn it, Ash
. She should have known better.

I understood Khanh’s impatience, though. I should have expected this from a woman who would walk into a minefield.

My tracking device said Sun was at home. I pinged it to make sure, and the response told me the device was still in place.

Impulse and adrenaline urged me to squeal up to his front door and kick it in. Common sense and self-preservation held me back. Instead, I took the time to pack my laptop and equipment. Glock in the shoulder holster. Colt .45 in a holster that fit snugly inside my belt. Beretta .38 strapped to my ankle.

I drove too fast to Sun’s street, then slowed down and cruised the block. It was after ten, and traffic was light. The houses were empty and mostly unlit, except for the flicker of televisions. There were no streetlights, so the road was lit only by the crescent moon and the Silverado’s headlights. No sign of Ashleigh’s car. I drove a grid, a half mile in each direction, in case they’d parked some distance away and walked in. Nothing.

They had to have come here. What else could Khanh have meant when she said she was going to stir the pot?

I parked on the next street and walked back, careful to stay in the shadows. Sun’s house was dark, not even a porch light. The gate to the backyard creaked as I slipped through it. The pool was lit, a rippling blue glow in the blackness.

Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peeked in the garage window. Sun’s car was there. No sign of Ashleigh’s. I pulled out my LED light and scanned the ground beneath the windows and by the sliding glass doors. There, on the concrete patio was a footprint. It was small and slender, like a woman’s, tread marks blurred but discernible. I listened at the door, heard nothing but my heartbeat and the wind, and bent to get a closer look. Something glinted in the grass beside my boot. I shone my light on it, and a chill sank deep into my bones.

A small jade monkey on a silver chain.

I
CALLED
Malone and texted Frank, then drove to the Brentwood police station and made a missing persons report to a beefy detective who said, “I’ll put out a BOLO on both women, but let’s hope they show up embarrassed and hung over in the morning.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” I said, but I didn’t believe God was listening. Or if He was, that He gave a tinker’s damn about any of us.

My last call was to Harold Sun. It went straight to voice mail:
This is Sun. You know what to do.

I waited for the beep and said, “You have something I want. I have something you need. Call me.” I wasn’t sure he would. Fifty-fifty, maybe. Events were spiraling out of his control, and by now he knew I was a threat. He’d want to take me out if he could get away with it, but he had no way to know if I was a lone gun or in contact with the police. Either way, we both had to assume that any arrangement either of us made was a trap.

There was no sense staying at the motel. I swung back to pick up the rest of my belongings, then realized Khanh’s duffel was still there. I felt another stab of guilt as I unzipped it to put in her toiletries and soiled clothing.

There wasn’t much inside. A few more photos of a smiling Tuyet—riding a motor bike, trying on a New York Yankees baseball cap, striking a ballet pose in front of a statue of Buddha. Another photo of Tuyet and an older woman sitting on the steps of a coffee shop, arms around each other. In the older woman’s face was the ghost of her younger self, the woman who had stolen—at least for a time—my father’s heart.

There wasn’t much else. A passport, a wallet with a few wrinkled twenties, a small ivory Buddha. For luck, I guessed.

Quickly, I stuffed the clothing and toiletries inside and carried both bags to the truck. If she came back, she’d find the room empty, but she wasn’t coming back. Not unless I went and got her.

On the way to the truck, I called Maria. “How is he?”

“Out of surgery. Still sleeping.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“He said it went well.”

I breathed out a relieved sigh. Then something in her tone registered. “It went well. But?”

“I worry about the 1 percent. Did you find Khanh?”

“She’s gone, Maria.” I looked up at the sky, the purpling bruise around the moon, and shook my head. “She’s just gone.”

37

B
y the next morning, Sun’s car still hadn’t left his garage. Ashleigh and Khanh hadn’t shown up looking sheepish after a tumble with a couple of cowboys and a mechanical bull, and according to Portia Ross, the police were no closer to finding the Executioner. But when I stopped by the hospital, Paul greeted me with sleepy eyes and a thumbs-up, so things were looking up. He poked my cast with a gentle finger. “Hurt, Daddy?”

“A little. You?”

“Uh huh.”

Maria said, “They’re giving him Advil and Tylenol for the pain. And something else, in his IV.”

I stayed with him while Maria and D.W. went downstairs for breakfast, then when they got back, kissed him good-bye and drove across town to Hands of Mercy. It had occurred to me that no one would have thought to notify them of Marlee’s death.

Claire sat at her desk beside a young black woman in jeans and a red tank top. A spiral sketchbook lay open between them, along with a set of colored pencils. They took turns adding lines to a drawing that looked like a cactus giving birth to a pineapple.

Claire’s smile faded when she saw my face. “Letisha, would you mind finishing this in the art room?” The black girl looked at me, then at Claire. She gathered up the art supplies and went upstairs with an exaggerated sway of her hips. Claire shook her head. “These girls are so sexualized. It’s the only language they know. But you didn’t come here for a lecture on the destructive nature of trafficking.”

“I came here to give you some bad news.”

“Oh. Oh no. Wait, let me get Andrew.”

I followed her around the corner and found Talbot at his computer again. “One minute,” he said. “I just need to finish this e-mail. There.”

“He has bad news,” Claire said. “I wanted us both to hear it.”

“It’s about Marlee,” I said.

“She left,” Talbot said. “We assumed she went back to her pimp.”

“She did. And then someone blew them both up, along with everybody else in the house.”

Claire sank into the chair across from Talbot’s desk and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God.”

Talbot came around the desk, and she stood up so he could put his arms around her. She laid her forehead on his chest and clutched his jacket in one fist, her shoulders jerking in silent sobs.

“What happened?” Talbot said.

“That picture I showed her,” I said. “We think she recognized it. Maybe she went back to warn Helix that we were on to his partner. Maybe she thought she could blackmail them. But then they decided to tie up the loose ends.”

Claire lifted her head. Her mascara had left dark rings beneath her eyes. “What picture?”

Talbot said, “I put it on your desk so you could scan it in and post it with the other two. It was in a manila folder. Didn’t you see it?”

“There was no manila folder on my desk.” She looked up at me. “You don’t think she took it?”

“Maybe. She’d need it to show him we were closing in.”

“We’ll need another one to post, then.” She pushed away from Talbot, dabbed at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “You had your pictures on a smartphone last time. Can you just share the file with me?”

I pulled it up on the phone and transferred it to her number. She looked at the photo and her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, Andrew. Did you see this?”

“No, I was in the middle of something when they brought it. I figured I’d take a look when you posted it. Why?”

“It’s Hal.”

“It’s not Hal. It can’t be.”

She handed him the phone. He looked at the screen, the muscles around his eyes tightening, then sank onto the desk as if his bones had turned to oatmeal. “This isn’t possible.”

“Who is Hal?” I said.

Talbot said, “My brother. Half brother. He took his mother’s last name.” He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and a thumb. “How could he do this?”

“Your father,” Claire said, softly.

Talbot turned to me. “Our father was a gunrunner. He had contacts all over the world. He used to take us with him, teaching us the family business. He must have branched out.”

“You said your stepmother was trafficked.”

“Dad bought her from a Saudi prince, who’d gotten her from a kingpin in the Japanese mafia. She used to tell us stories. Horrific stories.”

“What about your real mother? She didn’t object to all that?”

“She died when I was a child.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can’t believe Hal would put another woman through that kind of hell. But he must have started making contacts when we were working with Dad.”

Claire said to me, “They were just boys. It was all they knew.”

I looked at Talbot. “When did you get out of the gunrunning business?”

“I left home when I was fifteen and didn’t look back. Hal and I reconnected at our father’s funeral a few years ago. His mother had died by then.”

“So you and Hal weren’t close.”

“As kids, we were inseparable, but I just had to get out of there. I was always sorry I’d left him. So when we reconnected . . .” His voice caught. “If I’d looked at that picture, Marlee might be alive.”

My cell phone rang. Sun.

I looked over at Talbot and Claire, who looked like they’d just walked away from a plane crash.

“Where are they?” I said into the phone.